Lactose Intolerance Around the World

Approximately 90-95% of black individuals and 20-25% of white individuals throughout the world will have a partial or complete lactose intolerance. Most often people of African, Asian, and Mediterranean descent have it.

Most humans, like other mammals, gradually lose the intestinal enzymeundefined lactase after infancy and with it the ability to digest lactose, theundefined principle sugar in milk. At some point in prehistory, a genetic mutationundefined occurred and lactase activity persisted in a majority of the adultundefined population of North and Central Europe, and in some ethnic groupsundefinedaround the Mediterranean and Near East, in Noth Africa, and on theundefinedIndian subcontinent are those that have developed a gentic mutation to allow them to digest the lactose in milk. allowingundefinedcarriers to have milk as a nutritional resource, especiallyundefineduseful in times of food shortage.

These people share the longest known traditionundefinedof dairying, since humans first domesticated livestock and practicedundefinedmilk-based pastoralism (6000–9000 years ago), making milkundefinedabundant for adults.

Descendants of these polutations carried this genetic mutation with them to Noth America and Austalia.

For the majority of the world'sundefinedpopulations, however, the absence of genetic challenge has meantundefinedthat this genetic change did not occurred.